Many of the questions here are by people who are not used to be in the situation and want some sort of guidelines.

1. New to casino poker or to the tipping culture.
2. Tournaments or BBJ/high-hand promotions

So, a rational discussion could supply them with a base-line to contemplate and then adjust to what feels right for them.

Of course they could listen to a local dealer or to a parsimonious reg and hear that anywhere from 10% to 0.01% is "fair"/"normal" for winning $50K in a BBJ.

I hope this post isn't too harsh, but do any of you judge other players based on how much they tip? For instance, if they raise and take a pot of $3 at $1/$2 and tip $1 I'll automatically assume they are a fish/donk. Amirite?

Actually, yes, and I have mentioned it here before: you can spot a nit a mile away based on their tipping habits, and I definitely use that information in my table selection.


q/q

Or they are a recreational player who enjoys tipping. Maybe a dealer, maybe a bartender...not everyone is counting their end of year tipping amounts and saying 'man I better find ways to slim that number down'. Chances are the player you described doesn't grind 1/2 or 2/5 for a living, but beyond that I wouldn't auto-put him in the donkey category...

Agreed, nor would I table select based on someone's tipping preferences.

I tend to try to avoid this thread, but I just started tracking my tips and it's about $3/hr so far through a short sample size. I'm guessing that's about average? I tend to tip $1 on preflop pots > $20, $1 on post-flop pots over about $10, and $2 on really big pots (profit > $200). I'll tip $1 on pots that got to the river as long as there's more than like $5 in them, because they had to run out the whole hand. I'm a semi-reg and I'm friendly with some of the dealers, they remember me and my name, etc... So I assume I'm viewed as average or perhaps above average in tipping, plus I'm just a friendly guy who never mistreats them.

Now, that may be average, but when you extrapolate it out to a full year, it adds up a lot. I don't want to punish good dealers, but I've been considering stopping toking certain dealers all together or only on pots over $50 or something. What do you think acceptable criteria would be for doing that?

Examples - yesterday there were two limpers, I raised to $20 and everyone folded. I did not tip, as it was a small pot and no flop. That dealer started throwing my cards short, then didn't push my next pot all the way over so I had to reach out. As the next pot was $50ish I tipped anyway, but realized I'm encouraging bad treatment. She learned that if she starts pitching my cards short and not pushing my pots all the way, I tip.

Other dealers I've seen fail to count out bets that were splashed (not into the pot, just in general), or count them wrong by $5 - I wasn't in a hand and didn't want to make an enemy for correcting them, though I kind of wish I had.

Others are slow, or misapply rules, etc. What is the line that is reasonable to use in order to try to encourage good dealing by not tipping bad dealing?

She got mad for no tip when there wasn't even a flop?

@cuserounder, As a dealer, I have absolutely no problem at all with you stiffing some dealers that are just not deserving. Like the dealer you describe that obviously has entitlement disease.

I, as a dealer, tip more than most players. Especially where I work. However, that being said, there are some dealers in even my own house that flat suck and shouldn't be in the business. Those dealers get $1 from me. No matter how big the pot, and nothing on blinds steals. Sometimes even nothing on a 1 limp take down.

To me these would be dealers that don't pay proper attn. Dealers that are slower than a turtle. Dealers that can't read a board. Dealers whose heads are spinning around watching everything in the room but the game. Even dealers that blatantly hustle tips in what I deem an inappropriate manner. And especially those that are obviously ungrateful.

One thing you can do occasionally to encourage better dealing. When one of the bad dealers you hate is coming into the box, and a good dealer is leaving. Toss the good dealer $1-$2 (but if it's me make it a redbird) and say thanks, good job. But continue to stiff bad dealer until improvement. And do it every time .

But never give the bad dealer a hard time. Don't say anything. And stick to your guns.

I work in a top end room. I would be considered in the top 10% of dealers in any room (hard to say this humbly). And I encourage pushing bad dealers out of the business entirely or making them get good.

Please let me know if I should post this elsewhere...
For a SLOTS tournament, is a person expected to tip someone for something? If so, to whom and what percent? This scenario seems a little different than a poker tournament because you don't need to claim payout right away for the slots tourney. They give a thirty day window to claim prizes.

I'll leave it here for a couple days, but you'll get better responses in the General Gambling --> Other Gambling Games forum.

Yep. Personally, I don't care if it's a monster pot, one non-tip shouldn't upset a dealer to the point of shorting cards and not pushing pots. People do forget to tip by accident sometimes. If they get upset after it happens repeatedly, I understand - though it still doesn't excuse not pitching cards all the way, etc.

First of all, awesome post overall - very helpful. Thanks! Can you expand a bit on what some do to hustle tips? The only thing I can think of is tapping their tokes a little extra loud or saying redbird down, but I don't have an issue with that personally.

Love it. It shows them that you aren't just a stiff who doesn't tip, you're not tipping them for a reason.

Never have, never will. Aside from treating people nicely, it's just bad for the game, sours the mood, etc.

Thanks again, great stuff!

This is good stuff. If everyone did this maybe, HUGE maybe, bad dealers would improve. My guess is they'd stay the same and ask why they don't make as much money. Clueless

does anyone have recommendations for how to properly tip for a full time live tournament grinder, this is most likely covered but with over 300 threads I lost patience searching, a thread link or new post addressing this directly would mean a lot, thanks

Few, very few, are real full time tournament grinders. Commonly unless playing very high, juice is too big to truly be full time over any period live.

I often thought about doing something like this if I ever won one, glad to see someone else thinking about it. But I never took it too seriously until Saturday night. And then I won one (winning hand in a quads over quads room). I got the dealer pretty good, and $100-200 to several other good dealers, the friendly cashiers, and the food runner (nice kid, works hard for his tips). I expect to get some of the regular cocktail waitresses next time I'm there and a few more dealers who weren't around when I got paid. Figured I won the lottery, I wanted to share with those who make the whole casino experience enjoyable.

Unless your idea of "very high" is like $100-200, you're just wrong.

From my own inquiries, there doesn't really seem to be any good advice to be found, and trying to find it in this thread is definitely a nightmare.

Personally, I've settled on 5% -addon with some flexibility. If the addon is like 5%-6%, I'll usually tip 1% anyway, but if it's 7% or more, probably not.

I ignore the house fee when calculating tip. That's relevant for whether you want to enter or not, but it shouldn't be relevant for the tip IMO.

Some examples:

200+20+10 = 5% addon, tip 1%
200+20+20 = 10% addon, no tip
300+30+10 = 3.3% addon, tip 2%
300+30+15 = 5% addon, tip 1%
400+40+10 = 2.5% addon, tip 2.5%

Etc.

I avoid tourneys under $200.

Note that, sadly, this usually puts me as the worst tipper in the money. That makes me feel bad and wonder if I shouldn't be tipping more, but ultimately, it seems like everyone is just over-tipping, and I shouldn't be over-tipping just because they are. It's tough though.

Just recently, I finished 2nd, and I mentioned that I was thinking about what to tip for some reason, and the 1st place guy was like, "what's to think about, it's 10% and that's that." Of course, he doesn't even play poker regularly and had only entered on a whim, so I have no idea where he pulled that number from. But my 2% got severely over-shadowed.

People usually go 3% to 5%, when the dealers get 3% direct from the buy in, I would think 2% on top is very nice.

10% is a lot, imo.

You say that like it's the same for a $50 tourney as it is for a $5000 tourney.

We use percentages, but the idea of using percentages for this is very flawed.

I don't think my "tipping rubric" is the "right" way of going about it, but I figure I'll share it, with the hopes that it benefits other regulars who are worried that they are tipping too much or too little. From my perspective at least, it's pretty fair.

Here is my baseline for tipping (at a 1/3 game btw):

Profit of less than $30: 0

Profit $30-$100: $1

Profit of $101-300: $2

Profit of $300+: $3

That is how I tip dealers I have no strong feelings about, which in my room, is a good percentage of dealers. If you're a good, competent dealer who I never talk to off the tables, that's what you get from me.

If the dealer is one of the handful of dealers who I consider to be very bad, slow, unprofessional, etc...it gets scaled down. To the worst dealer in the house, I pretty much never throw a buck unless it's a pot of $100+, and it's never more than a buck, and on occasion, one of these dealers might be on tip probation altogether. It's not as though my stiffs are going to have a huge effect on that dealers wages...it's just a matter of principle.

On the other hand, if the dealer is one of the handful of dealers I consider exceptional (in terms of speed, professionalism, keeping the game on track, etc...) I scale things up. I might tip a buck on pots of less than $30, tip $2 more frequently, and when I ship $300+, they are usually gonna get a red bird.

I do this because I think dealers should be compensated for how good or bad they are at their jobs, and this is my small way of being a part of that.

I'm sure plenty of you have scales quite similar to this, but hopefully this post can help somebody..

I made my first live cash last week. $50 buy in, of which $10 to house and $5 to dealers. We chopped and my share was 400. What's a standard tip?

Standard there is 10 or 20 bucks.

I had my first tourney win over the weekend. $35 BI (25/5/5). I won $844. I kept the $800 and put $44 in the dealer toke. (7 hour tournament)

And I don't care who thinks that was too much or not enough.

Not even Nanny Ogg?

Juice in tournaments over say $500 is far far less than those in the $50-$150 most common tournament buyin.

Example's: The $125 dailies in LV run at $25 juice PLUS 3% for staff. That's 22% total juice and unbeatable.

$60 daily, $18 juice

$80 daily $20 juice

Long term these are unbeatable.

Peter Porker, you sir, are just wrong.